Protecting Yourself Online: Four Essential Safety Tips

Staying safe online has been a cause for concern since the Internet first became a commodity for use on a daily basis. Hackers, viruses, Trojans and more are waiting for you online and it’s easy to find yourself, and your device, compromised at their behest – it’s time to tool up and protect yourself online – here’s how to do it:

Firewalls and Anti-Virus Software

Probably the most obvious piece of advice any PC user can give to any of their peers: make sure you have some form of Anti-Virus software installed and keep your firewall updated against threats to your privacy.

Free-to-Use software isn’t good enough these days and the developers will hound you eternally to upgrade to the full version of their program – just have done with it and invest in some software such as McAfee or AVG; these programs update on a daily basis to nullify the threat of even the newest viruses and their inbuilt firewalls continuously evolve to protect you.

Remove the Threat with Add-Ons

It might seem contradictory, but there are some truly exceptional free-to-use Add-Ons available for your internet browser that effectively remove the threat of viruses ever having chance to infiltrate your defences.

AdBlocker is easily the most useful of these Add-Ons as it stops adverts and pop-ups from appearing when you browse online. By removing these virus hotbeds; you couldn’t click them even if you wanted to!

You can even get Add-Ons developed by the likes of Web of Trust that which gathers information to give websites a trust rating with the aim of keeping you safer online.

Consider VPN

Virtual Private Networks can be expensive if you’re seeking the fastest, most reliable connection to the World Wide Web but they are really very cheap if you’re only looking to keep yourself safe online – basic packages cost less than you might imagine for 12 months and the security offered is without comparison.

A totally secure, private link to the Internet will be setup when using VPN and nothing can get in that you aren’t made immediately aware of – if you trust the site then you can authorise the access but, if you don’t, there’s always the option to say no.

Do Your Research

Even the briefest of glances through the technology headlines, or a tech publication, will give a user all they need to know about which sites and practices to avoid online if they want to stay safe.

In the past, torrenting and downloading music, films and TV programmes has been the norm but, not only is this highly illegal, it also opens the user up to myriad threats from the great unknown. If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is – best to wait for Game of Thrones to hit the shelves on DVD than risk your system being broken by viruses you allow in through reckless downloading.

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